San Dieguito property owners overcharged on tax bill

DEL MAR  Property owners in the San Dieguito Union High School District were overcharged on their latest tax bills, officials announced this week.

About 70,000 homeowners in the district were sent bills that were about $100 higher than they should have been, according to county spokesman Michael Workman.

“We are aware of the issue and we are looking for a solution,” Workman said.

The problem stems from an assessment related to Proposition AA, a $449 million bond issue passed by voters in the district in November to pay for various school projects.

Somehow an error was made in calculating the tax rate, said Eric Dill, the district’s associate superintendent of business services.

He and Workman said they’re not yet sure how the mistake occurred.

The district was alerted to the error by Marsha Sutton, a homeowner in the San Dieguito district who is also an education writer for the Del Mar Times.

Sutton, who had covered the San Dieguito bond election, said she was aware of what her tax bill should have been and realized there was a problem.

“Knowing that it should have been a maximum of $25 per $100,000 in assessed property value, the amount charged was too high,” Sutton said. She wrote a story about the overcharging that was published Thursday on the Del Mar Times website.

Dill said that a portion of the bond that was issued this year was sold at a premium, which generated an additional $7 million. That figure was apparently not factored in correctly, which resulted in a higher tax bill of about $38 per $100,000 of assessed property value.

Had the figure been properly calculated the tax bills should have reflected an assessed property value of about $23 per $100,000, Dill said.

Voters were told during the election that the bond issue would cost no more than $25 per $100,000.

The San Dieguito district serves about 12,500 middle and high school students in Carmel Valley, Del Mar, Encinitas, Carlsbad and La Costa, Olivenhain and Rancho Santa Fe.

Workman said Friday that the county is working on a plan to refund the taxpayers who have already paid their bill and tell those who have not paid what to do. He said the county would send out letters to affected property owners next week.

There are three agencies that were involved in issuing those tax bills, Workman said — the school district, the county’s financial services department and the county treasurer-tax collector.

The district is supposed to give the financial services department information about the bond, which is then factored into the tax bill. The tax collector sends out tax bills and collects the payments.

Thus far, about 4 percent of the 70,000 the property owners in the district have paid their bill, Workman said. On average, those people overpaid $95 to $100, Workman said.

Sending out new bills with the correct information could be a long and complicated process, Workman said.

Dill said the fastest and easiest fix would likely be for property owners to pay the full bill and be refunded later.

District Superintendent Rick Schmitt issued a written statement Thursday saying the district “recognizes the seriousness of the problem and apologizes for the confusion.”

“Prop. AA was built around a promise that it would cost no more than $25 per $100,000 in assessed property value,” Schmitt said. “We fully intend to honor our commitments. The district will insist that refunds are quickly and easily processed to do what is right for our taxpayers.”